


Man or a Monster

by totallyevan



Series: The Umbrella Academy Inktober (2019) [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Ben Hargreeves is Dead, Everyone Needs A Hug, More angst, Vanya's book, no beta we die like ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 14:53:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20893892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/totallyevan/pseuds/totallyevan
Summary: Every single one of them knew the academy was broken. They never really knew how much until Ben died. Vanya didn’t have to rub it in, and she certainly didn’t have to let everyone else in the world know about it either.orThe Hargreeves reacting to Vanya’s portrayal of Ben and his death.





	Man or a Monster

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the "official" umbrella academy inktober, 2019, prompts made by me. I want to let you know that I absolutely adore all the hargreeves equally, I do NOT hate Vanya, I'm just simply writing what their reactions were when she mentioned his death in her book, based on what I think. Enjoy!

The last thing Luther expected himself to do was to sit in the corner of his room —away from his mirror at all costs— and read Vanya’s book.

After his accident, he had never considered coming out of his bedroom unless it was to use the bathroom or eat. He couldn’t bring himself to do anything anymore. He was never going to be the same ever again, there was no possible way to go back. 

Maybe if everyone had stayed, he wouldn’t have almost died. 

But deep down, he could only blame himself. He wasn’t careful enough on that mission, the others made their choice when they left. The world needed Luther and he had failed everybody. Including his siblings. 

He was hesitant about reading the book. For starters, the copy he had was dedicated to his father, but he wasn’t going outside to buy one for himself. He knew Reginald would never read it anyway. Having nothing better to do that day, that week, that month, Luther had started the book. He didn’t agree with a lot of things, but he knew he and Vanya had a very different childhood. 

What he didn’t expect to see was everything in Ben’s chapter. He was entitled to his own opinion almost every time, and he never backed out. That’s what made him a leader, according to Reginald. And even though he didn’t want to let Vanya’s view affect him, it did.

She had no right to talk about it like that. She wasn’t there. She didn’t see what he saw. What they all saw. And she didn’t know Luther’s intentions when he gave Ben that order.

Luther knew he pushed Ben a lot, and he knew how much the horror scared him. Everything he ever said or did to him was for Ben’s own good. That was how he saw it. What he didn’t know, was that when he ordered Ben to let the horror out, he also sent him to his death. He didn’t _ know _. 

And _ Vanya _didn’t know the guilt he felt. So, of course, she had to claim that it was partly Luther’s fault her brother died.

He was mad now. Mad at Vanya and mad at himself. Because what if it was true? What if it _ was _his fault? What if it was his fault that the family fell apart soon after? Was it all because of him? Because he wasn’t good enough?

Maybe his body looked the way it did because it’s what he deserved for killing his brother.

* * *

Ever since Diego landed eyes on that book, he knew whatever was inside it was going to be totally inaccurate.

Buying it only proved him right and with every chapter, he had to take a break. The chapter about himself gave him more than one reason to stab whoever agreed on publishing the book.

But Ben’s chapter just confused him more than anything.

There were some parts he didn’t disagree with at least. Blaming the leader. But Diego always wanted to _ be _the leader. Would he be want to be blamed for Ben’s death just because of that title as well? Nobody would. 

But some other parts were just… too far. He wasn’t mad when he read _ the _part, he was furious. He knew Vanya and Ben were close at some point, but her portrayal of what happened on that mission made it look like they were strangers. Maybe they were, maybe they lost touch.

Diego wasn’t personally that close with Ben.

He tried to teach him how to throw knives at some point, so he wouldn’t have to use his powers to fight, it just ended with a bleeding wound on the side of Diego’s face, which left him a cool scar in the end. And now every time he looked in the mirror, he always saw a little Ben hopelessly trying to throw his knife at the target. 

But it didn’t matter anymore, because Ben was dead and every time he looked at the scar, those nice memories he once had were replaced with Ben being ripped to shreds right in front of him. And Vanya, well, wrote what she wrote about that.

She shouldn’t have.

It was going to be hard to forgive her if he ever had the intention to.

* * *

Blaming others was something Allison did almost all her life, and she had no right to judge Vanya of doing the exact same thing. But it still caught her off guard seeing someone else do it.

Allison cared about Vanya, she always had, even though she was never the one to include her in things. She didn’t take the role of the loving sister as she wanted, and she never really understood why not. 

She was upset and angry about everything in that book. The chapter about her fiddled with her career for a while, but rumors were spread and sooner or later, things were sorted out. 

But she couldn’t blame Vanya for how she saw things. She was always excluded from everything, and she lost both the people that cared for her. No wonder she snapped.

It was always Five or Ben who invited her over to play games in the limited amount of free time they had. Allison didn’t know how much things shifted between Ben and Vanya’s relationship after Five’s disappearance. She did now.

And it made her think about _ her _relationship with Ben. She knew he looked up to her, and she had noticed he was shy to talk to her at times. They hadn’t spent as much time together as the Holy Trinity Vanya, Five and Ben had, but she still knew him.

He felt like the only voice of reason in the academy at times and she trusted him with things she couldn’t tell anyone else, not even Luther.

Vanya’s new point of view on Ben really took her by surprise, to say the least. Seeing someone —who was the closest to Ben, mind you— talk about him like that just didn’t click. It didn’t feel right. 

Allison would try her hardest to leave it in the past, but it was going to be hard. Harder than anything she’s ever done up to that point. Dealing with the reality of things was never her strong suit. 

* * *

Klaus didn’t have anything else to distract himself with whilst in rehab, and Ben’s nagging about checking Vanya’s book out had lasted longer than a week. 

So he gave it a chance. 

He himself had always been intrigued to read it, but he knew Vanya had opened a can of worms in that book that he didn’t want to be reminded of ever again. That did not stop him from picking it up, sitting on a chair —with a ghost Ben behind him— and starting to read.

He hadn’t expected anything different when he reached the chapter about himself. He hadn’t been the greatest sibling, he was never rude to Vanya or anything like that, he was just… in his own little world most of the time.

Klaus didn’t want to read Ben’s chapter. He could tell Ben didn’t want to either, but both of them ended up scanning the entire thing.

The Ben in that chapter was not the Ben Klaus knew. 

Sure, maybe death changed him, which it most likely did. He didn’t really know Ben when they were younger, only the dead version. And if he had to describe Ben the way he knew him in three words, it was would be _ ‘loyal little asshole’ _, which was the opposite of how he was described in that sorry excuse of a book.

Not only that, but Vanya’s view on his death just awakened something in him. Something that made him break the silence in the room by angrily throwing it back in the bookcase, which only made some other books fall down and join Vanya’s on the ground. 

He respected the hell out of Vanya, and he was even jealous of her. She didn’t have ghosts screaming in her ear, she didn’t have to get locked in a mausoleum every week, she didn’t have to go on missions and _ kill _ people so she could come back home safe, she didn’t have to _ watch her brother die. _

No, none of that. She just had to stay home, play the violin, help around with chores every now and then, join Grace when she cooked and play chess with Pogo. But, she was excluded and ignored and Klaus honestly felt for her. Nobody gave a shit about him either, he was useless on missions, so if anything, he could identify with her on that.

She still had something to say about Ben’s death, despite not being there, which just really upset him. 

* * *

Vanya’s book was the only thing Five had left that reminded him of home.

It was the only thing that reminded him of his humanity, of what his life used to be. The apocalypse hadn’t been easy. Time travel was a bitch. 

For him, it might have just been months since he time traveled, but for everyone else, for his family, it had been fourteen years. That was longer than the number of years he’d been alive for.

He missed a lot of things, according to Vanya. Taking his sweet time while reading everyone’s chapters, he landed on his own. And it really made him think about how Vanya felt about his disappearance even before he started reading. She meant a lot to him, and he meant a lot to her.

She lost her best friend, and she was never going to see him again because Five was going to be stuck here, alone, forever for the rest of his life. He would never find a way to get back. He had nothing and no one, it was just him and some mannequin he decided to hold onto, simply because it had a human face. How pathetic. 

But at least Vanya didn’t have to live like that. At least she still had Ben, right? 

No. Ben had died.

Ben had _ died _, and Vanya was alone. Which made Five feel even more guilty about not listening to Reginald when he said he wasn’t ready.

If he was there, he would have grown up, and he would have moved in with Vanya, and help her out through her depression and be the best friend and brother he promised to be. And maybe if he was there, Ben wouldn’t have died. 

He could have used his spacial jump ability to help the rest of the team escape before it was too late. Maybe he could’ve fixed everything if he wasn’t foolish enough to rebel against their dad.

There was something that confused him in regards to the book, though.

When he had left, when he had died for everyone else, Vanya was in mourning. But, from what he could see in Ben’s chapter when_ he _ had died, Vanya reacted differently. Maybe it was a new way of coping, but she didn’t sound sad. She was angry. 

Five wasn’t there to watch him die either, so he couldn’t understand what Vanya was saying in that last part, or, well, _ trying _to say. He could tell she hadn’t found the right words for it. But he was sure, without a doubt, that it backfired. 

He liked the book anyway, but maybe it had another use for him. Holding onto it to read it over and over again was not going to make him time travel back, but maybe, he had a chance to. And he needed a pen. 

He just had to find the right equation. 

* * *

If Ben could interact with the real world, he would have picked up the book and thrown it against the bookcase the exact same way Klaus did. Not out of anger, not really. He wasn’t _ angry _at Vanya.

He was just shocked. 

There was no other way he could describe it. Except maybe being hurt. Yeah, he was shocked and hurt. Really hurt.

He had always encouraged Vanya to speak up for herself whenever she could. Even though he didn’t know what it was like to be a shadow for everyone else back then, he tried to support her as much as he could. Both him and Five did.

Five. 

Vanya and Five were best friends. Ben was also a really good friend to them, but it was always Vanya and Five, at least in his eyes. He never complained though. He got it, sometimes things are like that, it was fine. 

When they lost Five, his only thought was his sister. So he tried to be there for her as much as he possibly could. But as the days went by, she grew more distant, and eventually, she pushed him away. He didn’t blame her for that. However, she had no excuse to make him the villain of the chapter, as well as the rest of his siblings.

He wasn’t the one who pushed her away first. He didn’t ignore her first. He didn’t ruin their friendship for the loss of someone else.

And she really didn’t have to blame someone other than Ben for dying. 

Vanya wasn’t there to see what happened. He was honestly glad she didn’t have to watch him die, however that didn’t change the fact that his death was his own fault.

Maybe, if he had listened to Luther sooner, he would have survived. Maybe if he hadn’t hesitated, he would have had time to calm the horror down before it ripped him to shreds, before he traumatized his family, having to watch it happen.

Before there was nothing left of him to even bury.

So yeah, he was upset about that. About the entirety of the book, honestly, or at least of what he was able to read before Klaus snapped and made a scene. And even after all of that, he still felt guilty. He didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to her, to anyone. He just really wished he could talk to Vanya, to clear some things up.

But he was never going to because Ben was dead. He was dead and there was nothing anyone could do about it, not Klaus, not anyone.

He was going to feel this way for the rest of eternity and there was nothing more horrifying than that. 

* * *

_ That moment plays in my head every day I wake up, despite how blurry it is. I remember our mom telling me that the specific mission was going to be dangerous. Of course, I got worried but knew that there wasn’t too much to worry about anyway. The Academy was strong, the enemies were ordinary. _

_ Our mom suggested I learn a new piece on the violin instead of focusing on my other studies for that day, to which my father agreed. So I did. _

_ Missions always took at least a few hours, but this time they hadn’t returned the time they usually did. This was a wakeup call for my father. I remember him putting on his monocle and leaving the mansion. I remember him starting the car as I watched him from the window. _

_ I remember hearing the car an hour later from the distance. I remember backing away and watching my brothers and sister as they entered the house. That’s when I realized one of them was missing. _

_ When I heard the news from our mom that Ben had died, I didn’t know if I was stuck in a nightmare or not. I remember freezing in place, and I remember how an invisible bullet went right through my chest, and I remember having the urge to throw up all over the floor. _

_ I hadn’t felt more grossed out in my life up until that point. I knew how vulnerable Ben was, and how eager he was to please my brother Luther and my dad. I didn’t know it would cost him his life. _

_ At the same time, I felt like I was hearing the news of a stranger. _

_ Ben had changed a lot. When Five left, he tried to talk to me, to make sure I was okay. But then he gave up on me. I needed time to heal and he didn’t give me enough of it. Ben had left me in a time of need and the abandonment was too much for me to take. _

_ I had nobody. I was alone, and nothing has changed about that. _

_ That didn’t change the fact that I was shocked by his death. He was still my brother, whether I liked it or not. _

_ Everyone knew Ben didn’t like to use his powers. He was ripped to shreds by them and the thought, the image of it even right now, as I’m writing this, makes me feel like someone is twisting my guts and making a knot out of them. _

_ He never wanted to use his powers again, he had told me so. And now that he had to, he died. Maybe if my siblings had done more work, if they had protected him, if they had tried harder, Ben wouldn’t have had to unleash the horror. Maybe he wouldn’t have died. _

_ But the truth was that Ben had already died for me, four years prior to that, when he decided he didn’t care about me anymore. _

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you want, you can follow me on tumblr @totallyevan, kudos and such would be appreciated <3


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